Gilded
by hungergamesfan30
Summary: This is a Harry Potter parody, telling the story of how Lily Evans experienced Hogwarts. I do not in any way own J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter characters or its universe.


**Chapter 1 – A New Concept**

She'd seen him around a few times. The quiet boy with his skin as white as snow and his mysterious dark eyes. Severus Snape.

They had never actually talked to each other, nor had she ever seen him talk to anyone else except for a few teachers. She figured that he was just shy.

Lily looked up at the tall trees with their evergreen leafs and the bright blue sky, dotted only with a couple of dark sparrows. She took in her surroundings like she had never quite appreciated the freedom and beauty of it all before.

A few months ago, Petunia would have joined her here to play hide and seek in the trees or to watch the ducks feast on some old bread. They used to go swimming in the lake and play tag for hours, only to come home tired yet excited about all the adventures they'd had.

These adventures didn't stop all at once, but gradually – just as slowly as Lily herself started changing. That was the only way she could describe it. Her sister had seemed to have been the only one to notice the strange abilities that Lily was suddenly able to conjure: the daisies on her windowsill that started blooming so suddenly in January; the chirping of the birds outside that began exactly when she woke up; the gentle ticking of the rain that echoed throughout the house whenever she was sad. They were just faint changes; not easily noticeable – but they were there.

And around the time that Petunia ceased to play with her, the mysterious boy popped up just about everywhere she went.

She saw him now, sitting against a tree trunk with a book opened in his lap. As she approached him, she noticed a few things. Things that were oddly out of the ordinary. First, she saw a small chipmunk sitting next to him, looking in her direction – and she could swear that it was watching her.

The next strange thing was that when she got a closer look at the book, she saw the picture at the top of the page moving. _Moving_ , as if it were not pressed onto a sheet of paper but displayed onto a screen, like the cartoons she used to watch with Petunia. She blinked swiftly, as if it were all just an hallucination and it would go away after she'd closed and reopened her eyes.

It didn't. The light-skinned boy looked up at her with the slightest of smiles; and something in his eyes hinted at pride.

"Do you mind?" Lily asked. Severus scooted slightly to the left and watched her as she sat down next to him. She nodded at the drawn pictures in the book. "Are those really moving or am I just going crazy?"

"You're not going crazy," he grinned. "You're just different, like this book."

She looked down at the knight that was smiling up to her from the page, and back up to the boy's face. His eyes really were an extraordinary kind of dark; as if there was a whole new universe hidden inside of them, waiting to be discovered.

"Like you?" She asked. He nodded somewhat shyly.

"Like me. Some weird things have been happening around you lately, haven't they?"

Her bright green eyes widened slightly as she came to a realization. Of course it wasn't just a coincidence that he'd suddenly started turning up everywhere she went, and deep inside she'd known that for a while.

"Have you been _spying_ on me?" Severus looked down at the green grass, where the chipmunk was still intently staring at the girl.

"I didn't mean to scare you… I just noticed –" He appeared to be reconsidering for a second and then said, a bit more softly, "I first saw it at school. You're in my English class, you know, and there was that day you got full marks on your final essay."

She looked down at her hands.

"The snow," she said. He nodded again. She had been so happy the day they got back their papers. She was the only one to have done such a good job. As the teacher announced the scores in front of the class – ranking the students from low to high – she had been thrilled not to have heard her own name yet. She was named last and right as he said it – "Lily Evans – an A-plus" – it started snowing outside. And it was not the usual snow that started off with a few flakes only; the kind that gradually became heavier. It had come down all at once, dotting the clear sky with thousands of tiny white specks. It had been beautiful, to say the least. Magical.

"I noticed that first," Severus continued, closing the book he had been reading before.

 _If he had been reading at all_ , Lily thought suspiciously.

"The snow could have been a coincidence, but I didn't think so. I recognized it from a story of my mom's." When Lily looked puzzled, he said, "She's a witch, too."

She raised her eyebrows at him as if asking for some explanation, though she already understood what he was hinting at. _She's a witch, too. Like you._

Severus looked down again, as if he hadn't meant to break the news to her like this. Or maybe – more likely – as if she wouldn't believe him.

"A witch?"

"Yes. I think you are one as well. You must be: no Muggle can do some of the things I've seen you do. Muggles are non-wizarding people, you must know," he added. Lily looked at him, taking him in all over again; trying to find something that distinguishes him from anyone else. Then of course, this was Severus Snape: everything about him could distinguish him from anyone else.

"So you're a wizard, then? Or are you – we – all witches?" Severus laughed.

"I'm a wizard, yes. My mom is a witch; my dad's a Muggle." He paused for a second and asked, "Do you believe me, then?"

"There's no harm in giving it a shot," she smiled, "Plus, it's the best explanation I've found so far. It beats thinking that all those weird things were just coincidences, anyway."

Severus smiled and nodded at the chipmunk in submission. Right as he did, the tiny animal stopped staring at Lily and after a second of confusion – possibly wondering where he was – he ran off into the trees on the other side of the field.

"Guess I won't be needing him anymore."

Lily looked for a second at the trees in which the beast had disappeared, as if he might come back, and finally turned back to smile at the boy.

"So tell me about all this wizard-stuff."


End file.
